


Watch Your Little Black Sheep Run (The Sweet Dreams Remix)

by metonymy



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Mal Was Right, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When inception fails, it doesn't quite work out how anybody plans. Luckily, Ariadne's not going to stop looking for a solution. And neither is Mal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch Your Little Black Sheep Run (The Sweet Dreams Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Past the Size of Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087109) by [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust). 
  * In response to a prompt by [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



Ariadne sits surrounded by books. It's familiar and comforting in a way, even though she's having the worst deja vu of her entire life. This isn't her parents' study, this isn't the library at school or the Professor's office, it's a room she only glimpsed in another man's labyrinthine dreams. But the books are real, the library bears no trace of the furious wind that howled through the house in Limbo, and her totem tells her this is real.

She keeps looking at the door like Dominic Cobb is about to walk through it. She still can't quite believe their plan didn't work. Arthur and Professor Miles had seemed so sure of it. Robert had assured her that the designs had been perfect, the best work he'd seen in years. But instead she was working the crick out of her neck when Eames woke up from the last forge of the Professor, sat up and shook his head and covered his eyes. Instead, she got to meet the real Mal. 

Lovely, just like Arthur had told her, but vibrantly alive. Her carriage was different when she stood and walked, her eyes crinkling at the corners and a line between her brows when she considered things, her mouth far more mobile. A grief hanging around her like a cloud, but still different than the rage and fury of the self-loathing that had animated Dominic's shade. 

The door creaks and Ariadne looks up -- but it's Mal and Arthur, both with shoulders straight like they've been arguing. Ariadne's managed to tame her flinch by now, after Mal apologized over those first rejected designs, but she's still wary. This woman has years of experience in the dreams and out of them, she's the scion of the foremost family of psycho-oneirology, and Ariadne's only known about it for about two months since the Professor asked if she was interested in one of his invitation-only seminars on the _locus amoenus_ and architectural psychology. It's hard not to be intimidated even without the legacy of Dominic's shade between them.

"Ariadne," Arthur says, coming over and sitting down easily beside her on the floor with a little hitch at the knees to let his trousers bend. She's still not sure how he manages to sit in pants that close-cut without embarrassing himself. She still hasn't asked him about that kiss. But there will be time for that later. "What do you have for us?"

Ariadne looks at the copy of the _Contes de Perreault_ she'd been leafing through. "I'm not sure yet. You don't want it to be too obvious. And you want all of you there to draw him in, don't you?" She pulls another book closer, the familiar paperback of Hamilton's _Mythology,_ and another book of fairy tales. "I was thinking maybe the sorting. Like Cinderella sifting peas from the ashes, or Psyche having to sort the grain. They had birds and ants to help. Why not dreamers?"

Mal makes a soft, aborted sound in her throat. Ariadne glances up at her, and there's an odd look on the woman's face that she can't read. Mal rubs at her lips and mutters something that sounds like "father" but might be "bother," then shakes her head and gives Ariadne a shaky smile. "You know your mythology, then."

"With my name, I kind of have to," she says, rolling her eyes. "Do you think that'll work?"

"I think it will be very suitable," Mal says. "Tell me more."


End file.
